2016 Exhibitions

Jeanelle HurstHighrise Wallpaper 1988
Documentation of the project ‘InterFace 88: City as a work of art’, Brisbane.
Collection of Jeanelle Hurst. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

2 April 2016 – 26 June 2016

ephemeral traces provides the first comprehensive analysis of artist-run practice in Brisbane during the final decade of the conservative Joh Bjelke-Petersen government. The exhibition focuses on the scene that developed around five key spaces that operated in Brisbane from 1982 to 1988: One Flat, A Room, That Space, The Observatory, and John Mills National.

Drawing on artworks, documentation and ephemera, the exhibition provides a contextual account of this progressive artist-run activity, examining collective projects, publications and the spaces themselves, as well as organisations such as the Artworkers Union and Queensland Artworkers Alliance. A counterpoint to Michele Helmrich’s earlier exhibition Return to sender (UQ Art Museum, 2012), which focused on the artists who left Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen era, this exhibition is about the artists who stayed.

21 April – 24 July 2016

We who love: The Nolan slates is a window into the world of renowned Australian painter Sidney Nolan (1917–1992), reflecting a time of artistic experimentation and personal upheaval. From December 1941 to June 1942, Nolan made around 32 paintings on roofing slates. They reveal his distinctive preference for non-art materials, his avant-garde aspirations and his literary interests. Through the paintings, Nolan recorded the end of his marriage, new relationships with patrons John and Sunday Reed, and fears arising from the war in the Pacific. Concerned that there might not be ‘many more tomorrows’, Nolan painted the slates as a remarkable, even desperate, avowal of emotional and creative freedom.

Nolan’s deeply personal paintings on slate have been exhibited as a group just twice since 1943. We who love presents the most comprehensive display of the series ever assembled. Executed in rapid succession, the slates are a painted journal, declaring exultant love and lingering sorrow. Their rich, metaphorical imagery invites viewers into Nolan’s life at a pivotal moment in his development.

Media

Laurence HopeFinding the lost n.d.
Gouache on paper
Collection of The University of Queensland. Gift of Mrs Pamela Crawford (née Seeman), 1988.
Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

21 April – 24 July 2016

In 1945, at the close of the Pacific war, a group of young Brisbane artists formed Miya Studio, named after an Aboriginal word for ‘today’. Founding members Pamela Seeman, Laurence Hope and Laurence Collinson, together with Cecel Knopke, organised studio space and encouraged artists to respond to the challenges of the contemporary world. In Collinson’s catalogue preface for the second of the group’s five annual exhibitions, he critiqued the local art scene, stating ‘The members of Miya Studio are attempting, as far as a small group of young artists with only moderate means at their disposal can attempt such an undertaking, to make this arid soil vital.’ Barjai (‘meeting place’), a Brisbane-based magazine for literature and art aimed at a young audience, shared and supported their ideals.

This exhibition revisits these endeavours with a focus on The Miya Studio Archive, which Pamela Crawford (née Seeman) donated to UQ in 1988.

Media

Installation view of Weaver Hawkins 1893–1977 memorial retrospective exhibition displayed at the University Art Museum in the Forgan Smith Tower, March 1979. University of Queensland Archives.

9 July – 13 November 2016

In 2016, the UQ Art Museum celebrates its 40th anniversary. Over its history much has changed: four directors have guided the institution’s core cultures; the Art Museum, first established in the top two floors of the University’s Forgan Smith Tower, moved to the repurposed Mayne Centre – formerly the University’s Graduation Hall; and the University’s Art Collection has increased tenfold.

In keeping with the Art Museum’s foundational aims, the development of the Collection and the exhibition program has been led largely by the desire to unpack ‘the contemporary’ – works of art that interrogate, critique and record the present moment. beyond the Tower provides us with the opportunity to look back over the changes and challenges of the past and, with that as context, to set the compass for the decade ahead.

6 August – 30 October 2016

Taking its title from an artwork by Destiny Deacon, Over the fence features the work of 18 Indigenous artists engaged in the field of photography. Indigenous art is often political, and these artists address various contentious issues, including identity, representation, racism, religious influence and the exploitation of land. The artworks in Over the fence are drawn from the private collection of art patron and philanthropist Patrick Corrigan AM, a long-time supporter of contemporary Australian art.

Media

Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre Bagley-CliffordOffice of the National Bank of Detroit 2005
from the series ‘Ruins of Detroit’
C-type print. UTS Art Collection
Reproduced courtesy of the artists.

12 November 2016 – 26 February 2017

Drawing from alternative currencies, banking archives, pop culture and contemporary art, Creative Accounting scratches below the surface of the economic system to reveal money’s enigmatic side. Money is many things at once: an abstract rendering of value; an agent of propaganda; a decorative device. It plays a central role in all of our lives yet is often overlooked as an object of contemplation.

This exhibition will connect diverse local audiences with ideas around currency, economic systems and historical quirks at a time when money is becoming increasingly abstract in the digital age. It will present a multiplicity of ideas, mediums and narratives drawn from a wide sphere, with local archives ‘mined’ for content to complement the international and Australia content.

Public Program

Bitcoin: The currency of the future or financial disaster? Tuesday 21 February 5.00 pm

A segment of Bitcoin: The End of Money As We Know It (2015) provides the starting point for tonight’s discussion between Bitcoin Brisbane’s Lucas Cullen, UQ Professor of Economics Flavio Menezes and local artist Daniel McKewen, along with audience members. More

Opening

Friday 11 November 6.30 pm
opened by Professor Iain Watson
Deputy Vice-Chancellor (External Engagement)
The University of Queensland

Podcast

'Art and value' discussion panel

Listen to thinkers and artists from Creative Accounting in a conversation around notions of value, exchange and human capital. Featuring: Holly Williams (exhibition curator), Professor Flavio Menezes (UQ School of Economics), and artists Andrew Hurle and Joachim Froese here

25 November 2016 – 2 April 2017

The work of Denise Green AM came to prominence in 1978, when her paintings in the exhibition New image painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, were recognised for their spare yet resonant visual language. Born in Melbourne, Green grew up in Brisbane and studied in Paris and New York. She settled in New York City in 1969, where she continues to live and work.

Green exhibits regularly in the USA, Europe and Australia, and in recent decades retrospectives of her work have been presented at P.S.1 Center for Contemporary Art/MoMA, New York; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve. She is the author of Metonymy in Contemporary Art (2006) and Denise Green: An artist’s odyssey (2012). This exhibition offers an opportunity to reappraise her work, including her recent photo collages.

Denise Green celebrates the major gift of works that the artist’s husband Dr Francis X. Claps MD made to UQ in 2013. More